HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

Mayhew recalled, and. sometimes two or three men "in different branches occupied one
apartment." 'O
Working scavengers also lived close to where they worked, &"in the
neighbourhood of the dust-yards, occupying "second-floor backs," kitchens (where the entire
house is sublet. a system often fraught with great extortion), or garrets." " Mayhew observed that
bone-grubbers, rag-gatherers, and pure-finders usually lived "in small garrets in Bermondsey's
poorer parts carrying on their trade in their own rooms, 'using and keeping the 'pure' there; hence
the 'homes' of these poor men are particularly uncornfortable. if not unhealthy." '' Poor districts
such as these became an immense terra incognim periodically mapped out by urban explorers
such as Mayhew, who catered to urban traveller's insatiable demands for travellers* tales,
especially stories of the feared East-End. "a huge city itself in all but name." ''
mobility. combining conservative. liberal, and radical tendencies within them. The threat of sinking was
conjured up in the Communisr Manryesro of 1848: 'The lower strata of the middle-class . . . sink gradually
into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern
industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists. partly because their
specialized skill is rendered worthless by new means of production" (Marx and Engels, 1955. 2.252:
quoted in Kunzle, 1990. 8).
7()
Mayhew. 111: 224. Mayhew described the cabinet-makers as "a sober class of men. who seem so perfectly
subdued by circumstances, that they cannot or do not struggle against the system which several of them
told me they knew was undoing them" (Ibid.). Engels referred to Rev.G.Alston's statistics on Bethnai
Green: "It contains 1,400 houses. inhabited by 2.795 families. comprising a population of 12.000. The
space within which this large amount of population are living is less than 400 yards square, and it is no
uncommon thing for a man and his wife. with four or five children, and sometimes the grandfather and
grandmother, to be found living in a room from ten to twelve feet square, and which serves !hem for eating
and working in" (Engels. 35) (my italics).
" Mayhew declared that there were '262 men employed in the Metropolitan Scavenging Trade; one-half of
these at least may be said to work 16 hours per diem instead of 12, or one-third longer than they should"
(Mayhew, 11: 222).
" Mayhew. 11: 226.
73
Mayhew. 11: 143. Mayhew recounted the familiar smell of poverty: 'The rooms of the very neediest of
our metropolitan population. always smell of fish; most frequently of herrings" (Mayhew, I: 62).
74
Stedman Jones remarked: 'The old methods of social control based on the model of the squire. the
parson. face to face relations, deference. and paternalism. found less and less reflection in the urban reality.
Vast tracks of working-class housing were left to themselves. virtually bereft of any contact with authority
except in the form of the policeman or the bailiff' (Stedman Jones. 197 1. 14). "Slum" is the root word for
the modern meaning of the word "slum" which includes whole houses and districts in town and country
that are low. unfrequented parts of town.